Introducing people to the world of fantasy football

Fantasy football for competitions like the Premier League, Champions League, Euros, and World Cup can be a tremendous amount of fun. Fantasy games allows you to explore the sport beyond your fandom, showcase your keen intellect of the sport, and engage with it on a deeper level. However, fantasy football loses a lot of its appeal if you're the only one you know who's playing.

Being in a league with your friends, family, and workmates is half of the fun, with you each able to brag about picking the right players or setting the right captains each week. So, to help you get more people involved and to a competitive level quickly, consider using the points below as laying the necessary groundwork for fantasy football newcomers.

First things first: mathematical analysis

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For knowledgeable football fans who watch all of the highlights and many live games each week, picking a fantasy team and making fantasy transfers throughout the season can quickly become second nature. However, a prospective new participant can easily add to these instincts or beat someone working on gut instinct by analysing the stats used to score in fantasy and working out probabilities from those records.

They need to make sure that their mathematics mind is on point, as misinterpreting numbers or establishing probability incorrectly could affect results. While resources such as Whoscored are useful for accumulating data and rankings, most people want to have fun when rebooting their maths mind, for which the best thing to do is play a probability-based game.

Easily the best and most accessible game for anyone looking to enhance this skill is that of blackjack. Not only are games like Vegas Single Deck Blackjack Gold Series and Free Bet Blackjack at Videoslots easy to pick-up, but picking up the mathematical aspects of the classic card game bolster gameplay tremendously - making it potentially rewarding on more than just an intellectual level and beyond the maths benefit it could bring to a fantasy game.

With a strong sense for calculating probabilities, your friends and family can then delve into statistical records to analyse aspects such as a player's record when away from home, their rate of scoring a goal or assist, if they achieve a clean sheet when lined up alongside certain players at the back, and so on. From there, a new fantasy player can have a much better idea of who to trust on their team.

Next, research and reacting

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Once everyone's familiar with the analysis of working probabilities behind fantasy football, what comes next is perhaps the most necessary but straightforward part: keeping up with the news. In fantasy football, doing research to find injuries and tactics is key, but the biggest part of the season will inevitably be during the transfer windows. Assessing how events like transfers will impact teams and individual players is a key skill which fantasy managers should establish early on through strong mathematical analysis.

When a player is transferred out from a club, it can often leave a vacuum which needs to be filled: if it can’t be filled, particularly in the attacking roles, other players around them will suffer fantasy-wise. On the other hand, it's also worth considering the impact that they'll have at the new club and if that impact will be immediate or in a couple of games or so. It's very rare that if a first-team player gets transferred, all other first-team players on their old or new team manage to continue to produce at the same level.

A prime example of this was Steven Bergwijn coming to Tottenham Hotspur in light of yet another Harry Kane injury and Christian Eriksen being seemingly absent throughout the season. The young Dutchman proved himself to be goal-savvy in the Eredivisie, with his eye for a goal already shining through in a Spurs team desperate for attacking options.

Almost everything in fantasy football comes down to knowing the league at hand. While to play, you don't need a strong base knowledge of every team, you should look to build up your ability to assess probability through mathematical analysis, examine existing stats, and take note of how to react to major events like injuries or transfers. From there, seeing good match-ups for certain players and knowing when to make fantasy transfers will become much easier.